Disney's new princess flick, Frozen, has been acclaimed the world over for its catchy soundtrack, engaging and relatable characters, and, most of all, its innovative girl power message, telling girls everywhere they don’t need a prince to come to their rescue, they can save themselves. Frozen is the story of two sisters, Elsa and Anna, princesses of the fictional Nordic nation Arendelle, a sea-faring land with a rich trading industry. Mayhem ensues when it is revealed that Elsa, heir to the throne, has the ability to manipulate snow and ice. It made a splash at the box office, grossed over $368,000,000 in the United States alone, and there are already whispers of a Broadway adaptation in the works. Frozen even boasts one victory at the Golden Globe Awards and two at the Oscars. It is clearly the family must-see of the year, but is it all it’s cracked up to be? Let’s look at what lies beneath the stunning visuals and show-stopping tunes that are a given in dealing with the Disney name.

Among the biggest flaws in Frozen is the soundtrack. While it does not lack quality, it is upon closer inspection extremely inconsistent. Unlike the composing teams responsible for Disney’s earlier musical hits, such as Beauty and the Beast by Disney legends Alan Menken and Howard Ashmen (the pair also did the music for The Little Mermaid and Aladdin) and Pocahontas by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz (who wrote the music for Broadway bombshell Wicked and Dreamworks’ critically acclaimed The Prince of Egypt), there was little collaboration between the songwriters and composer working on Frozen. True that the husband and wife duo, Kristen and Robert Lopez, who wrote the lyrical music for the film are credited with the hugely successful musical The Book of Mormon and Christophe Beck, the film’s composer, has written the scores for many famous Hollywood movies, such as Pitch Perfect, but having a star studded musical staff was not enough to create a cohesive soundtrack for the film. Disney’s less successful soundtracks, like that of Mulan, also lacked a strong musical team. Again it did not matter how many great soundtracks the composer, Jerry Goldsmith (Planet of the Apes, Rambo), had under his belt , the scores failed where it counted – it did not blend with Matthew Wilder and David Zippell’s songs; both sides had very different ideas for how to characterize the sound of the film in both situations.

Frozen’s opening track is a Lion King-esque chant, which gives the expectation of an interesting, ethically grounded audio motif, but it quickly gives way to the Broadway style chorus song, "Frozen Heart". This abrupt change from one genre to another is something that permeates the film. Almost all the character songs are pop with a Broadway flair. None of them have any connection to the rich cultural references made in the choir-sung score pieces sprinkled throughout the film. Even the score employs these Nordic influences sparsely, a haunting flute here, a transcendent choir chant there. There is no flow between score and lyrical song; at the points where the score does reprise melodies from the character-sung music it sounds forced and uncomfortable because those pieces sound completely different from the ones that have ethnic ties.

The music is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The reason the soundtrack was inconsistent is that the staff was trying to do too much. They created a resonating, more ethnically based score reminiscent of Pocahontas or Lilo and Stitch, but still wanted to rake in the cash, and added lyrical pop music to pander to public tastes.

A similar problem arises when looking at the plot of Frozen. The film begins with a chorus of ice cutters working in the mountains, including a young boy who, it is later revealed, is one of our male leads, Kristoff. However, these mountain-men are never seen again, and Kristoff's early introduction has minimal bearing on the plot at large.

Then we meet our main characters, Elsa and Anna. Shortly after a colony of magical Trolls are introduced, half for comic relief, half to impart pieces of the film’s exposition. The Frozen writers waste time introducing the ice carvers, only to never use them, and also bring in the Trolls, making the pacing of the film seem more abrupt and the Trolls harder to become invested in. Perhaps it would have been more logical to they had cut the Trolls all together considering the film already began with characters that matched the story and ascetics of the film much better. The Trolls’ lumpy, too-colorful, inelegant design does not align well with the look of the film. Next to Elsa’s cool, delicate ice castle they appear boorish and strained, whereas the mountaineers blend in perfectly. It is possible that the creators of Frozen introduced these opposing visuals deliberately, as a means to juxtapose the man-made settings of the film, such as the capital city, but they appear too briefly to successfully accomplish this. Instead the trolls jar the viewer by presenting two very different types of imagery that do not look like they belong in the same movie, ruining suspension of disbelief. Removing the trolls not only would have tidied up the plot, but also have established a more logical place to add Kristoff, a mountain man and main character, into the mix. Again, Frozen's attempts to have more in the story end up hurting the its overall clarity and affectivity.

However, flaws in plot and soundtrack are not the most crushing of Frozen’s weaknesses. The film has become so beloved by both public and critics because it is a supposed tale of female empowerment. As Melissa Leon of the Daily Beast writes, “For a Disney heroine, finding empowerment in her [Elsa] own feminine physicality, for herself and not the prince, is revolutionary,” and Rotten Tomatoes boasts “Disney gets nearly everything right in this animated charmer: wit, warmth, a lovely voice cast and a real message of girl power.” The princesses don’t need a man, they save each other. Such claims have been thrown around by many parents and critics alike since the movie’s release, but it is not as true as might seem.

Admittedly in the end it is Anna herself who saves her sister and her kingdom, not one of her suitors but this is not enough to call Frozen a story about independent women. Anna is the ultimate hero, but aside from trying to find a way to save her country, she spends the entire film focused on finding love, reliant on men. She, like most of the Disney princesses before her, was waiting for her prince to rescue her from her life of solitude, just as she sings at the beginning of the film in “For The First Time In Forever.” Even at the end of the film she is running around looking for true love’s kiss to save her; none of her supposedly empowered behavior is deliberate. She saves her sister, and herself, by accident, and still gets the guy in the end. While she is definitely a strong woman, she is not an independent one.

Today’s world is all about the push for female empowerment, so naturally Disney tried to create a more modern princess this time around. Anna is a compelling, relatable character, someone women of all ages can identify with, right? She loves chocolate; she is a mess when she wakes up in the morning; she is excitable, slightly violent and a bit awkward, but she is never independent. Everything that supposedly marks her as a modern gal is frivolous fluff. Simply put Anna lacks depth. She is rash and moody, love-struck and naive, and that is it, what you see is what you get. Though the audience sees her going through several emotionally charged moments, points when her inner-strength would be expected to flair, she instead wilts and does nothing. The greatest example of this in the film is when Elsa refuses to return to Arendelle’s capital city and take responsibility for what she has done. Anna initially tries to convince her sister, but as soon as Elsa fights back she quickly submits and flees. Once Anna’s character has been closely examined it is revealed that everything progressive about her is superficial, there is nothing truly empowered about her. She cannot get to her sister without Kristoff’s help, in fact, if it was not for him she wouldn’t have even known which direction to go; she doesn’t fight back when her sister abandons her, or even so any righteous anger towards her. She barely manages to save Elsa in the end, and it is entirely by instinct, not because she is of a girl-power mind set. Sure, Anna may go around punching princes and fighting off wolves, but if anything this makes her fall deeper into a mold of the stereotypical Hollywood female; it certainly doesn’t establish her as an independent woman.

So Anna is not the empowered sister, but is Elsa? No. Elsa does go off on her own, but it is out of fear, cowardice and self-doubt, not a strong sense of independence. She is powerful and fully capable of holding her own against an aggressor, but that is nothing new, countless other Disney females are as well. Still, she is nearly defeated by men, proven too weak to even control her own abilities and needs to be rescued, just like so many other weak fairytale damsels.

In the end, yes Frozen is a flawed film, but this does not mean it isn’t worth seeing. Though much of the film’s praise in the media has been exaggerated and partially unwarranted, it does have some merits. The soundtrack, though inconsistent is fun; the plot, though a bit convoluted, is entertaining, and the characters, though not as strong as they could be, are interesting. The public is not wrong to enjoy the film; there is a reason it has become a six-month long sensation. Frozen is a story about adventure, family, kindness, love and learning to accept yourself and others for who they are. The journey Anna goes on to end an eternal winter and Elsa goes on to end her eternal misery has all the themes of a Disney classic, sadly the execution is a bit shaky. At the end of the day Frozen may not be on the level of the greater Disney works, but it still isn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon. Just watch out for random trolls!

Frozen is now playing in theaters throughout Shanghai and is available for purchase on iTunes.

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This article was written by Naomi Losman. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Art Credit: Naomi Losman